Roulette – From a Perpetual Motion Machine to a Casino Landmark

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Written by Boris Atanasov
Boris Atanasov
With more than 4+ years of experience in the iGaming industry, Boris Atanasov writes exciting content about slots, video poker, roulette and blackjack.
, | Updated: September 26, 2025

An absolute casino classic, roulette is one of the world’s oldest house-banked gambling games. The details of its origin remain shrouded in mystery, and many competing theories attempt to pinpoint where the game began.

Many believe that French mathematician Blaise Pascal inadvertently invented the roulette wheel in the 17th century. Others draw parallels between roulette and the medieval concept of the Wheel of Fortune, which the blindfolded Lady Fortune would spin to randomly determine a person’s fate – often with ruinous results. The underlying idea was that both good and bad fortune are transient, which is arguably a fitting metaphor for the impermanence of a gambler’s luck.

Yet various historical references suggest that similar games were played in ancient times by both the Chinese and the Romans. In this article, we trace the history of this casino classic and highlight the key changes roulette has undergone through the centuries. Why? Because to truly understand roulette, you need to know its history and the transformation it has undergone to become the game we know today.

The Evolution of Roulette

1The Ancient Ancestors of Roulette

Let’s go back to the very beginning. Some theories suggest that a game vaguely similar to roulette was played in ancient China. Players arranged 37 figurines representing different animals on a square board that featured numbers whose cumulative total equaled 666.

This game was supposedly brought to the European continent by monks, who introduced various modifications such as using a circle instead of a square. The problem with this theory is the lack of surviving records detailing the exact rules of that ancient pastime. Still, the fact that the numbers on the roulette wheel also total 666 is, in our opinion, an intriguing coincidence.

Games that bore a faint resemblance to roulette were also popular among ancient Greek and Roman soldiers. They would draw symbols on the inside of a shield, place it on the ground next to an arrow, and spin the shield. The soldiers wagered on which symbol the arrow would indicate when the spinning shield came to rest. While this largely mirrors roulette gameplay, there is no substantial evidence to support the theory that roulette is of Greek or Roman origin.

2Blaise Pascal and His Failed Attempt at Devising a Perpetual Motion Machine

Many people believe that the French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal created a primitive form of the roulette wheel in the 17th century while attempting to devise a perpetual motion machine. Such a device was expected to run indefinitely without any external energy source.

Predictably, Pascal’s efforts were futile because such a machine would violate the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The scientist, who also studied the probabilities inherent to gambling, may have failed in his experiment, but he arguably paved the way for one of the most popular casino games in the world.

An unknown innovator allegedly expanded on the concept, carving numbered pockets into a spinning wheel large enough to hold a small ball that would determine the winning outcome.

Other sources claim that roulette’s design and gameplay were adapted from two similar games, Even/Odd and Roly Poly, which were enjoyed by Continental European gamblers in the 17th century. Gambling was not widespread at the time, largely because many European countries considered it immoral and banned such activities.

One of the earliest recorded descriptions of roulette in Europe appears in an 1801 book by Jaques Lablee, where he references a roulette wheel at the Palais Royal in 1796. The game was already very similar to the version we know today.

Even the payouts for the various types of bets were nearly identical. The wheel contained numbers 1 through 36 along with single and double zero pockets in alternating black and red. Green was chosen for the zero pockets in the early 1800s to prevent confusion.

3The Blanc Brothers Introduce the Single-Zero Wheel

France rightfully receives most of the credit for shaping roulette into its present form. In 1842, the Frenchman François Blanc and his brother Louis opened a successful gambling house in the independent territory of Bad Homburg, now part of modern-day Germany.

Because gambling houses were outlawed in France in 1837, the brothers had no choice but to set up their casino abroad. Bad Homburg’s ruler granted them a license, and in return the Blancs paid substantial annual taxes that funded the small state’s law enforcement and defense.

Shortly after opening, François and Louis removed the double-zero pocket and introduced the first roulette wheels with only a single zero. This change reduced the house edge.

The Bad Homburg casino remained highly profitable even though gamblers occasionally won huge sums. When a lucky player emptied the cash reserves at a roulette table, François would have the table covered with a black cloth to indicate it was temporarily out of service.

The casino enjoyed tremendous success and attracted hordes of notable personalities, including Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. He quickly fell under the spell of the Devil’s Wheel and struggled with problem gambling for ten years. Dostoevsky’s fascination with roulette later inspired his novella The Gambler, a tale of love, ruin, and addiction.

Roulette takes over the gambling world

Roulette Takes Monte Carlo by Storm
blank Roulette Travels to the New World
blank Roulette in Present Days

Roulette Takes Monte Carlo by Storm

The success of the Homburg casino piqued the interest of Prince Charles III of Monaco, who desperately needed money to revive the struggling economy of his small kingdom. When Germany outlawed gambling in the mid-1860s, the Blanc brothers finally yielded to Prince Charles’s pleas and moved their operations to Monaco, where they took over the Monte Carlo Casino. The business quickly took off, generating such enormous revenue that Prince Charles even exempted his subjects from paying taxes.

It was around this time that various systems for beating the roulette tables began to gain traction. An English gentleman named Charles Deville Wells arrived at the Monte Carlo Casino in 1891. Wells played roulette with such inexhaustible energy and drive that people initially assumed he was the reckless heir to a great fortune.

He would arrive at the Monte Carlo Casino at noon and gamble with abandon until the establishment finally closed its doors at 11 o’clock in the evening. Wells is said to have broken the bank at the roulette tables on multiple occasions, generating £40,000 in profits (around £4 million in present-day terms) over the course of just a few days.

The gentleman was bold enough to return a couple of months later, when he repeated the feat and won £20,000 more. This sparked speculation, and many believed Wells was cheating the house, a plausible assumption given his prior history as a patent fraudster.

He claimed that he had perfected his own “infallible system” for beating the game, although it is likely he was simply extraordinarily lucky during those visits. Gamblers flooded the floors of the Monte Carlo Casino in an attempt to replicate Wells’s remarkable success at the roulette tables. The game soon spread throughout Europe like wildfire.

Roulette Travels to the New World

Roulette sailed to the New World with the French settlers who reached the shores of Louisiana at the beginning of the 19th century. The first gambling houses to offer the game opened their doors in the port city of New Orleans and were quickly flooded by gamblers from different races and social standings.

This motley crew inevitably led to commotion, brawls, and even the occasional homicide. For this reason the authorities decided to allow gambling only on board the riverboats that traversed the Mississippi River.

The game traveled to the frontier towns of the American West with the Gold Rush that shook the country in the mid-19th century. The American wheels originally featured only 28 red and black numbers. There were three additional pockets that gave the house a greater edge: the green single zero, the double zero, and a pocket bearing the image of an eagle, which symbolized the young country’s liberation from the British Empire.

Gamblers were naturally displeased with the higher house advantage, and the eagle pocket was eventually ditched for the present-day version of the wheel, which uses numbers 1 through 36 plus the single and double zeros.

Gambling became legal in the state of Nevada in 1931, and soon after, the first gaming venues in what was to become Sin City received their licenses to offer roulette and other games of chance. Over the next decades, roulette gradually began to give way to card games like blackjack, which offer much better odds to gamblers.

Roulette in Present Days

Roulette experienced a resurgence in popularity as the Internet began to reach households around the world at the turn of the 21st century. The new technology gave rise to the first online casinos, which provided roulette fans with instant access to various single-zero and double-zero variants.

With physical limitations removed, gamblers now enjoy an enormous selection of original alternatives to traditional roulette. Some prime examples include Pinball Roulette, Double Ball Roulette, Multi-Wheel Roulette, and Spread Bet Roulette.

This timeless casino classic has reached unprecedented heights, offering today’s players more betting opportunities than ever before. Following the launch of the first live dealer casino in 2003 by Playtech, authentic roulette games streamed in real time became available at the fingertips of gamblers worldwide. We are convinced the future holds even greater surprises for fans of the Devil’s Wheel, as gambling technology will surely continue to improve in the years ahead.

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